Blatter is not the only dinosaur football needs to slap down

An elderly gentleman, offensively misguided and patently confused, has made a few crass remarks about racism in football.

Since his views are supposed to carry some weight in the game, the effect of his foolishness is both damaging and depressing.

He believes that football pays far too much attention to racial abuse, that reports of racism in the game are wildly exaggerated and that we should turn a deaf ear to racist insults.

Dinosaur: Wigan chairman Dave Whelan

In the course of an interview, he delivered these carefully considered views: 'I just think we should forget colour and, you know, it doesn't bother anybody, I'm sure. When they're playing at such a level, the stress is there. And if they call somebody white, if they call somebody black, you've just got to get on with it.'

He added: 'I think the players who come and complain sometimes, they're a little bit out of order.'

The gentleman in question is Dave Whelan, the chairman of Wigan Athletic, who made his remarks a couple of weeks ago. He is a rough-hewn, straight-talking dinosaur; the kind of dim ranter you dread might sit next to you on the bus. Since he is 75 this week, Whelan is unlikely to change his unreconstructed attitudes.

Nobody took much notice when he came out with that drivel. 'It's Dave Whelan,' they said. 'What else did you expect?' Sepp Blatter was rather less fortunate. The president of FIFA is also 75 and his remarks were equally unacceptable: 'There is no racism [on the field] but maybe there is a word or gesture that is not correct. The one affected by this should say this is a game and shake hands'.

His attempts to extricate himself were even less convincing: 'What I wanted to express is that, as football players, during a match, you have battles with your opponents and sometimes things are done which are wrong. But normally, at the end of the match, you apologise to your opponent if you had a confrontation during the match, you shake hands, and when the game is over, it is over.'

The old boy seemed quite shocked when the roof fell in on his delusions. Indeed, he was sufficiently shocked to produce a collector's item of an apology: 'I couldn't envisage such a reaction. When you have done something which is not totally correct, I can only say I am sorry for all those people affected by my declarations.'

Unfortunately, his contorted remorse did not run to resignation. On the contrary, he said: 'When you are faced with a problem you have to face the problem. To leave would be totally unfair and not compatible with my fighting spirit, my character, my energy.'

This is what the trade calls The John Terry Gambit.

But here's the point: Blatter's recantation was prised from him by British pressure. The rest of the world was either miserably cowed or scandalously indifferent to his casual prejudice. So the world game is controlled by a man who sees nothing wrong with a player being subjected to vile abuse throughout a match, provided that hands are shaken at the final whistle. So what?

British football saw it differently. Players, managers and public, all were united in affronted indignation. There was an overwhelming rejection of the notion that football should offer a 90-minute dispensation to the kind of behaviour which society at large finds intolerable.

And the louder their fury, the more untenable became Blatter's position. Desperate stone-walling bought him a few hours but soon reality was recognised and the qualified apology was forthcoming.

It was a truly heartening demonstration of the deepest, most decent instincts of our game.

The days when our football offered a stage to crude, unthinking, racist attitudes are now a part of our dark and distant past. We have moved on, to the point where we can wade into the most powerful man in the wide world of football, secure in the knowledge that our own domestic attitudes are almost beyond reproach.

Almost, but not quite. There remains a handful of people whose views need to be aggressively challenged. Neither advanced age nor bovine ignorance is a justification for befuddled bigotry. We must be scrupulously even-handed. The almighty Blatter has been resoundingly confronted. It is high time that the clown prince of Wigan received the derision he deserves.

No end to this City madness

We now have an excellent idea of how much Manchester City had to pay for last season's FA Cup Final victory: £197.5 million.

That is the size of their loss for the year ending May 31, 2011. The sum includes an annual wage bill of £174m, which helps explain the grotesque dimensions of the deficit.

Strangely, those figures do not shock us. They are simply too large, too far beyond our understanding. I do not know what the state of Abu Dhabi would expect to pay for a sustained advertising campaign, which is what City have effectively become, but the thickest end of £200m seems rather extravagant.

Costly victory: Manchester City won the FA Cup - but then recorded a loss of £195m

Certainly UEFA will think so, as their president, Michel Platini, continues his commendable struggle to introduce some reality to the prevailing financial madness. And City are acutely aware that they are currently incapable of meeting Uefa 's financial edicts.

Graham Wallace, City's chief operating officer, announced: 'We are cognisant of the incoming UEFA financial fair play regulations and consequently we continue to maintain positive and ongoing dialogue with all appropriate football authorities.'

Truly, we have not heard such a mangled, meaningless piece of pomposity since the great Garry Cook took his leave of East Manchester.

But I fear Platini will not be impressed. For City have three years to achieve a form of financial sanity. And the signs are not promising.

Survivor Andrew sells culpability the perfect dummy

As he left the Press conference, a small, smug grin flittered across Rob Andrew's face. Martin Johnson was history, the hostile questions merely a memory.

Andrew looked like a senior civil servant with an enviable talent for survival; the Permanent Secretary for Paper Clips, who has come through a Select Committee interrogation with only a few flesh wounds.

The media, by and large, have neither affection nor admiration for Andrew. In his playing days he was an earnestly orthodox outside-half, persistently and perversely preferred to the more mercurial, more gifted Stuart Barnes. In middle age, he has mutated into a Teflon apparatchik, a skilful eluder of anything resembling blame.

Last week, while Johnson manfully accepted every bullet, Andrew looked on dispassionately.

No sidestep: Rob Andrew the bureaucrat

Although he was conspicuous by his low profile through most of England's World Cup misadventures, he had turned up to pronounce the last rites over Johnson's troubled tenure.

Once or twice he attempted a condescending swipe at his critics. Would he step aside to allow the best candidate to manage England? 'No,' he sneered.

'It is a complete lack of understanding of structure. I am not sure how many of you worked in business and understand how structures work, and how reporting lines work and how a multi-million-pound operation actually functions in terms of reporting lines…

'If anyone wants to come and discuss all the detail of that and understand what structure is, as opposed to perception, then please come and talk to me about it.'

I suspect it was intended to sound like Bill Gates. Risibly, it came out as David Brent. Not that Andrew realised, as he swept off to his latest pointless review, testily regretting time wasted on truculent hacks.

When people imagine the authentic voice of a Twickenham bureaucrat, they tend to conjure up the clipped, bloodless, self-justifying tones of Rob Andrew.

So why is he still in situ? Don't ask me. Try the Ministry for Paper Clips. But just don't expect a straight answer.

PS...

'All is possible in football. Why can't we win? Nobody can deny us our dreams. We have to believe.' So spoke Giovanni Trapattoni following the Republic of Ireland's thunderous qualification for the European Championship finals.

At the age of 72, Ireland's manager is seeking a new, four-year contract. He says his health is good and his enthusiasm is unquestioned. We wish the very best of good fortune to this decent dreamer.

Patrick Collins has been shortlisted for the prestigious William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.

Among The Fans is Collins's account of a year spent observing the emotions of sports fans, from the Ashes Test in Adelaide to the greyhounds at Crayford.

The William Hill Award is the longestrunning and most valuable prize in sports writing, worth �27,500 to the winner.

Collins faces competition from Paul Kimmage, who won the award in 1990 and is shortlisted for Engage: The Fall And Rise Of Matt Hampson, an account of the England Under-21 rugby player left paralysed after a collapsed scrum.

Also shortlisted are cyclist David Millar for his autobiography, Racing Through The Dark, and Ronald Reng for A Life Too Short, the story of German goalkeeper Robert Enke who killed himself in 2009, aged 32.